When electronic health records are hard to use, patient safety may be at risk: Study

that could harm patients, including dangerous drug interactions. Additional reports have indicated that poorly designed EHRs could be a contributing factor.

To investigate further, the research team studied EHR systems in 112 U.S. hospitals. They compared results from an EHR experience survey taken by 5,689 clinicians with outcomes from an EHR safety evaluation tool. The Leapfrog CPOE EHR safety test examines whether medication orders that could potentially harm a patient properly triggers alert systems.strongly correlated with EHR safety.

In cases where clinicians experienced those troubles, those EHR systems were less likely to flag drug-drug interactions, a patient's allergies to drugs, duplicate orders, excessive dosing or other harmful medication errors. One explanation behind the link is a lack of quality control, Classen explains. Individual hospitals modify EHR operability to meet their specific needs. Some of these changes may be at the expense of safety. What's more, despite the fact that there are many EHR systems, currently there are no standards for usability and safety.

Improving EHR systems in the long term may need a different approach, Classen explains. Just as the Federal Aviation Administration, airline manufacturers, and airlines jointly monitor and improve airline software, a similar collaborative effort with EHR vendors, hospitals and clinicians may be what's needed to optimize EHR software for user satisfaction,David C.

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